Sarkozy already knockout in first round, he will not be president again

Today, 21:39

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has conceded defeat in the first round of elections for the candidacy for the presidency of his party. The counting of votes is still under way, but Sarkozy has trailed the votes of the two former Prime Ministers Fillon and Juppé all night.

With 80 percent of votes counted Fillon is ahead. He has received 44 percent of the vote and Juppé stands at 28 percent. Sarkozy remains at 21 percent. The two candidates with the most votes will go through to the next round, which will be held next Sunday.

Sarkozy, for his part, had praised Trump’s election as validation of his own claims to speak for the “silent majority” and as a victory for a democracy and the principle of “listening to the people.” Trump is unpopular in France, and Sarkozy’s open support for Trump doubtless played a role in his elimination in the first round. Sarkozy explicitly centered his campaign around stigmatizing Muslims: here.

Muslims across France are fearing a backlash after Wednesday’s attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine. Several mosques have been attacked. A bomb exploded at a kebab shop in Paris. We speak to Muhammad El Khaoua, a graduate student in international relations at the Paris Institute for Political Science. He grew up in the outskirts of Paris where he was involved with different grassroots associations, including Salaam, a student association dedicated to promoting interfaith dialogue and a better understanding of Islam. Also joining us is Lebanese-French academic Gilbert Achcar, professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

Initially, it was thought the tweet had been sent after Mr Chardon’s account had been hacked, but the mayor confirmed he sent the extreme message.

Recently the mayor has been treated for cancer of the mouth and came to his radical proposals during this period.

“During my treatment, I’ve been thinking and I came to this conclusion. Islam should be banned in France, but also a Marshall Plan should be established to allow those who want to practice the Muslim religion to do so in their home country,” he told Le Monde.

Mr Chardon became mayor of the small town of Venelles in 2012 after the death of his predecessor.

USA: Former 3rd District Congressional Candidate Admits Plotting Armed Militia Attack, Firebombing Of Muslim Community In New York. Robert Doggart’s Plans Included Burning Down A School, A Mosque And A Cafeteria, According To Federal Court Documents: here.

Former president says he favours some form of marriage for same-sex couples, but not the same as for heterosexuals

The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has told supporters that the country’s same-sex marriage law should be scrapped.

Sarkozy, who is campaigning to lead the opposition centre-right UMP party and is expected to run again for president in 2017, was speaking at a debate organised by the conservative Common Sense (Sens Commun) group on Saturday.

Homophobes calling themselves ‘Common Sense’ … reminding one of George Orwell’s novel 1984, where war is peace and ignorance is strength.

His comments, two weeks before the UMP’s hotly contested leadership election, prompted catcalls from the 3,000-strong audience and cries of “Repeal! Repeal!”. Sarkozy, appearing rattled, responded: “If you’d rather one says repeal the law and make another one … in French, that’s saying the same thing. It comes to the same result. But hey, if that makes you happy, then frankly, it doesn’t cost much.”

Sarkozy explained he was in favour of some form of marriage for same-sex couples, but something different from that for heterosexuals. He said he opposed surrogate parenthood for same-sex couples.

The same-sex marriage legislation is known officially as the Taubira law, named after the justice minister Christiane Taubira who oversaw its introduction.

“It’s no use being against surrogacy if you don’t repeal the Taubira law,” Sarkozy said to cheers and applause.

The former president, who has been married three times, has previously criticised the legislation, saying it was “humiliating families and humiliating people who love the family”, but it is the first time he has called for its repeal.

An Ifop poll published on Saturday found that 68% of respondents supported same-sex unions and 53% supported adoption by same-sex couples, which is illegal in France.

Sarkozy’s comment and apparent policy-making on the hoof brought angry reactions from the governing Socialist party, which accused him of “appealing to the most reactionary instincts of his core supporters”. A spokesperson said Sarkozy wanted to create “a new form of segregation” with his two-tier marriage proposal.

Sarkozy calls for UMP unity after narrow victory in leadership contest. French opposition party supporters in record turnout but under 65% give ex-president mandate for 2017 election: here.

FRENCH former president Nicolas Sarkozy didn’t exactly get a warm embrace from his party on his return to public life on Saturday.

Mr Sarkozy won a race for leader of France’s main conservative party – but with a margin of victory smaller than predicted: here.

Two French heads of the IMF in a row in legal scandals of different kinds begins to reflect embarrassingly on their country of origin. Christine Lagarde, when she was shortlisted for the job after Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned in disgrace, did mention there was a risk of her past career resurfacing, but she got the post anyway.

PARIS — Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, said on Wednesday that French prosecutors had placed her under formal investigation over a murky business affair that dates to her time as finance minister under former President Nicolas Sarkozy. …

She made the announcement a day after she was questioned for a fourth time in the investigation of her role in 2008 during an arbitration proceeding between the government and Bernard Tapie, a onetime cabinet minister and the former owner of the Adidas sportswear empire. Prosecutors had assigned Ms. Lagarde the status of “assisted witness” in the case. Placing her under formal investigation signals that prosecutors believe they have evidence of wrongdoing, but the charge of negligence hardly suggests high crimes.

Negligence by a government official that makes possible the misappropriation or embezzlement of public funds is punishable with a maximum fine of 15,000 euros, or $19,800, and up to one year in prison. …

In the French legal system, a formal investigation suggests prosecutors believe they have enough of a case that they may ultimately bring criminal charges and trial. …

A leaked letter in which IMF chief Christine Lagarde pledges her allegiance to former president Nicolas Sarkozy has caused bewilderment in France, raising further suspicions over fraud at the highest levels of government.

“Use me”, International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde purportedly urged former president Nicolas Sarkozy, in a letter court investigators seized at her Paris home in March and which was leaked to the French press.

The undated and handwritten letter, a wholehearted pledge of allegiance to Sarkozy, has caused bemusement in France because of its strange choice of words, but has also rekindled concerns about Lagarde’s role in a controversial settlement that awarded millions of euros from the state to controversial French businessman Bernard Tapie in 2008.

The IMF chief was questioned for several hours on May 23 by prosecutors looking into whether the settlement was the result of fraud. More specifically, investigators are probing whether Tapie received the payout thanks to his cozy relationship with the Sarkozy administration – which included Lagarde as finance minister.

…

However, the leaked letter – in which she tells Sarkozy “Use me for as long as it suits you and suits your plans and casting call” – has thrust her back into the spotlight, calling her impartiality into question and showering her with ridicule for the unusual style and vocabulary used.

…

A translation of the full text originally published on the website of daily Le Monde follows below.

Dear Nicolas, very briefly and respectfully,

1) I am by your side to serve you and serve your plans for France.

2) I tried my best and might have failed occasionally. I implore your forgiveness.

3) I have no personal political ambitions and I have no desire to become a servile status seeker, like many of the people around you whose loyalty is recent and short-lived.

4) Use me for as long as it suits you and suits your plans and casting call.

5) If you decide to use me, I need you as a guide and a supporter: without a guide, I may be ineffective and without your support I may lack credibility.

With my great admiration, Christine L.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy gave an hour-long primetime interview on France2 Sunday evening, after announcing Friday in a Facebook post that he is officially returning to political life after his defeat in the 2012 presidential elections: here.

Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, is reportedly facing trial in France over a €400 million (£290 million) payout to businessman Bernard Tapie, according to French media: here.

They suspect Sarkozy, 59, sought to obtain inside information from one of the magistrates about the progress of another inquiry and that he was tipped off that his mobile phone had been tapped by judges looking into the alleged financing of his 2007 election campaign by former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

The case could prove devastating for Sarkozy‘s hopes of a political comeback in time for the 2017 presidential campaign.

Violence is engulfing Libya’s capital city, Tripoli. Coming less than a year after elections that were trumpeted as a vindication of the NATO-led invasion to topple the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, the renewed clashes testify to the tenuous hold that Prime Minister Ali Zeidan’s government has over the war-torn country.

Last week, a car bomb blew up outside the French embassy, wounding two guards and several residents and causing extensive damage to buildings nearby. The bombing was thought to be the work of an Al Qaeda-linked group opposed to the French intervention last January in Mali against Islamist forces that had taken control over the northern part of that country. The previous week, Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), Al Qaeda’s North African arm, had threatened retaliation.

Yesterday, a bomb destroyed a police station in the eastern city of Benghazi. There were no casualties.

Only a few days ago, the French parliament voted to extend its military mission in Mali, while the United Nations has raised the prospect of a second “parallel” task force to carry out “anti-terrorist” operations “outside the UN mandate”. This special unit is to be set up primarily by France and will be stationed either within Mali’s borders or elsewhere in West Africa.

France worked closely with Qatar and other Gulf petro-monarchies, which financed, armed and trained Islamist forces to oust Gaddafi, and is currently working with Doha, as well as Ankara and Riyadh, which are backing forces including the Al Nusra Front, which is linked to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, in a sectarian war to overthrow Syria’s president Bashar Al-Assad and isolate Iran.

The NATO war undermined the tenuous equilibrium Gaddafi helped keep among Tuareg and other tribal groups in the Sahara. Together with the influence of regional Islamist groups, boosted by NATO’s decision to place Al Qaeda-linked Libyans in positions of power, this undermined the Malian military’s control over the country’s restive north.

Some of these forces sought to wrest control of Mali and its mineral resources from the French-backed military junta in Bamako, cutting across France’s geo-strategic and commercial interests in Libya and its former colonies in North and West Africa.

France sent its military into Mali to drive out the Islamist and tribal armed forces. Now, Islamist groups ejected from Mali have moved north, crossing the Sahara through Algeria and Niger back into Libya, fuelling a growing insurgency. The cynical policy of using Islamists to advance France’s interests is now backfiring, as it did against the US in Benghazi last year, destabilising the NATO-installed regime.

Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who flew to Libya, said France “would work with the Libyan authorities to find out who had carried out the attack.” This may mean the dispatch of French special forces.

In other incidents, at least 200 gunmen have been surrounding the foreign ministry, the interior ministry and the state news agency since Sunday, demanding that officials who had worked for Gaddafi be banned from senior positions in the new government. On Tuesday, they occupied the finance ministry. Policemen also stormed the interior ministry earlier in the week, protesting pay.

There have been growing protests against former regime figures who still hold important positions. Last March, protesters barricaded legislators inside the Congress building for hours, insisting they pass a law prohibiting members of the old regime from holding office. Such a law, depending upon how it is implemented, would affect 80 percent of the National Congress, and if extended to the judiciary would remove almost all the judges.

Crucially, it would affect the cabinet, which includes ministers from the National Forces Alliance, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, and the Justice and Construction Party, as well as so-called independents, regional leaders and some former regime figures. Their confirmation by Congress last October led to angry protests outside the Congress building, which were dispersed by gunfire from the security forces.

Zeidan was a former diplomat who fell out with Gaddafi in 1980 and lived in exile in Switzerland where he worked as a lawyer. He was one of the founding members of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NSFL), which worked for the armed overthrow of the Libyan regime in the 1980s, backed by Saudi Arabia and the CIA.

In 2011, he served as the National Transitional Council’s European envoy and played a key role in persuading French president Nicolas Sarkozy to support the anti-Gaddafi forces. His party came second in the elections after the National Forces Alliance.

The NATO-led neo-colonial invasion of Libya in 2011 cut oil output, its primary source of revenue, to virtually zero and destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure. As a result, the economy contracted by more than 40 percent in 2011, from which it has yet to recover. Libya already suffered from massive social inequality, 50 percent youth unemployment, large economic disparities between the regions, and corruption. All of these problems were exacerbated by the war, which forced a million people to flee their homes.

Libya now functions as a global weapons bazaar, sending arms and fighters to Syria and other conflict areas. Within Libya, there are hundreds of militias, many affiliated to Al Qaeda, which fought in the NATO war against the Gaddafi regime.

These armed brigades now fight pitched battles against rival groups for “zones of influence” in Libya’s towns and cities. There were particularly deadly clashes in Zintan and Zuara over who should guard the oil and gas complex in Western Libya belonging to Mellitah, a joint venture between Libya and Eni, the Italian energy group, before the army restored order.

A recent report from the International Crisis Group spells out Libya’s pervasive insecurity. Armed gangs proliferate and lawlessness abounds. There is no functioning justice system in many parts of the country. Armed groups, originally sanctioned by Libya’s Transitional National Council, continue to run prisons and enforce their own summary justice systems, including assassinations, torture, abductions, and attacks on government forces.

The government is trying to cut the flow of men and weapons into its southern border region with the help of surveillance equipment supplied by Washington, which has set up a base for drones in Niger, from which it can monitor Mali and Libya. The Libyan government has also completed a 108-mile trench through its southwest desert border area to deter smugglers.

Zeidan is seeking to clear the militias out of the eastern port city of Benghazi, where attacks by Islamist militants are on the rise, but lacks the armed forces to do so. As of last December, the US has been supplying Libya with drones and an Orion electronic warfare aircraft to help it gain control of the city.

The government has launched a crackdown on the militias in Tripoli, with security forces stationed throughout the city. They have emptied several illegal detention centres and seized 36 bases used by the militias.

The continuation of these conflicts and the descent into street fighting expose as a lie the justification for the NATO-led war for regime change—that it would bring democracy and human rights—and the so-called left groups that supported it. These were convenient fictions behind which the US and its allies could advance their interests—by taking control of Libya’s oil wealth.

Nicolas Sarkozy was cheered in Tripoli on a recent visit. But the former French president could soon fall from grace if his alleged dark dealings with Gadaffi come to light: here.

The security situation in the Libyan city of Benghazi continues to deteriorate: here.

The European Court of Human Rights has admonished France about the conviction of a man who had insulted President Sarkozy. The man had put a sign next to the car of the president, saying “Piss off, asshole.”

The man appealed against the 30 euros fine. The judges in Strasbourg have found that the action by the man is freedom of expression and that the punishment is disproportionate.